


(Do Not) Defy The World

by AmiLu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alchemy, Amputation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fullmetal Alchemist AU, Healing, Human Transmutation, M/M, Naruto Magic Week 2019, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Character Death, and its consequences
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2020-06-03 17:24:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19468633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmiLu/pseuds/AmiLu
Summary: “At three,” Obito says. Kakashi breathes in deeply and banishes all lines of thought, all the doubts circling his mind. He has to concentrate. Calm. Breathe. “One, two—”The sound of their clapping in unison is loud in the tense silence of the room. The moment stretches indefinitely, as if time has decided to stop passing for a heartbeat or two.“Three,” Obito says, and the three of them put their palms flat on the floor.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Naruto Magic Week on Tumblr. Day 3: Alchemic Arrays.
> 
> First chapter edited as of 11-24-2019

Kakashi picks up the brown paper bag with a nod, turns, and gets out of the shop. He squints at the brightness of the sun shining over him and ducks his head, hunches his shoulders, walks away. His grimace is hidden beneath the dark cloth of his mask.

The inhabitants of Konoha go about their day as normal, chatting happily among friends, discussing theories, ranting about market prices. There are not many kids around, as most are either at school or at the Academy, but nobody gives Kakashi a second glance, because he might be only fourteen, but he’s long since graduated and everyone knows it.

He kicks a pebble and turns right instead of left, but nobody notices.

(People rarely notice anything, really. It makes him both furious and grateful, most times. Mostly grateful.)

The alley is cobblestone and not much to look at. It’s not a high-end place, but it isn’t shady, either, so it doesn’t attract much attention. There is an abandoned storehouse there—unremarkable, with walled up windows and a nondescript door. People rarely pass by it since the alley is located in a non-residential area, and that’s exactly why they chose it, in the end. They can’t risk people realizing what they are up to. They can’t afford to be discovered, to be stopped.

(It has taken them too much time, too much effort, and too many things depend on it going well; they can’t be found. They  _ can’t. _ )

Silently, he walks up to the green door of the storehouse and knocks two times, then three, then only once more. After a second, a lock moves with a soft click, and then he’s face to face with Rin, who greets him from the other side.

“Did you get them?” she asks as she ushers him inside, then locks the door again. She claps her hands together with intent and touches the array carefully carved on this side of the door. The glowing light of a successful transmutation momentarily illuminates the room, washing everything in blue. Then she turns and demands, “Did you?” when Kakashi doesn’t immediately answer.

“Yes,” he says, holding the bag up for her to inspect. “And no, nobody followed me.”

“I know,” she says, tipping her head to the side. A strand of brown hair follows the movement, covering the purple mark on her right cheek. She huffs and pushes it away and behind her ear. “You’ve always been more discreet. Why do you think I sent  _ you _ and not Obito?” she asks, dryly.

“Hey!” Obito complains, and it’s almost nostalgic. “I can be discreet. I could’ve totally done so, too!”

Rin takes Kakashi’s offering and hums, unconvinced. “Maybe,” she concedes. Kakashi would protest, but…he’s seen what Obito is capable of, now. How much he’s grown in his time in captivity, both in body and abilities. He could have probably done so, even when he’s still an active and buzzing topic for discussion in the Konoha’s rumor mill. (He has been so since the moment he miraculously came back alive months after that disastrous mission near Iwa, and Kakashi can’t really blame them when he’s still not convinced it’s true, even though he has the proof right in front of his eyes, breathing and scowling.) “But I needed you here more,” Rin adds, stalking towards Obito, who is crouching at the edge of the massive chalk circle on the middle of the floor. “You’re the one who understands this—” she makes a broad gesture over the circle, then opens the paper bag and gives it to Obito, “—the best. Kakashi might be a genius but this one is tricky enough not to trust in just that.”

In another time, another life, Kakashi would have scoffed, would have been offended. He would have said something along the lines of, ‘we are talking about Obito here, there’s no way he is better at alchemy than me’, or a similar nonsensical thing, too full of himself and his so-called genius.

Not now.

Not ever again.

(He lost him once when he was barely learning that rules aren’t everything, that friendship and emotions and caring are the most important part of being a successful Alchemist, a successful  _ human being. _ )

(Kakashi’s learned since then, and now that he has Obito back he’s not about to fall back into bad habits. He refuses.)

Obito doesn’t gloat, doesn’t smirk, doesn’t even look pleased that Rin is complimenting him. The Obito that came back to them after his time with Madara is a haunted one, a rougher version of the teammate they had before, with scars and trauma and a smile that’s hard to come by, when before it rarely left his face. It’s been...an adjustment, getting used to the change. Still, Kakashi is just happy that he has his friend back.

Obito nods, accepting both the words and the offered bag, peeks inside, and makes a short sound of approval.

(It’s pathetic how much that vague noise means to Kakashi.)

“This will do,” Obito says. With a gloved hand he picks up the smaller bags of Phosphorus, Sulfur and Lime from inside the paper bag and cautiously sprinkles the contents over the rest of the ingredients that lay on the middle of the array. They had to buy them separately to not arise suspicion, as most are common ingredients and quite innocuous if bought separately, but together they combine to create a very defined picture that they aren’t interested in painting for anyone paying enough attention to see.

Obito puts the bag away, takes off the gloves and throws them into the trashcan in the corner of the room. He studies the circle critically, then nods again. “It’s done.”

Rin’s eyes are sharp and assessing as she asks, “You sure?”

“Yes,” Kakashi answers instead, looking over the intricate white lines that form the beautifully complex array. The calculations are sound and all the elements are well balanced, drawn masterfully over weeks of teamwork. The ingredients are all in place. It’s ready. “It’s perfect.”

One corner of Obito’s mouth twitches upwards, and Kakashi’s heart leaps in his chest.

“It’s only us left, now,” Obito says, making a gesture with his hands towards three points, equidistant from each other and placed almost outside the circle, in which each of them will have to kneel in order to activate the transmutation.

Kakashi breathes in deep. He can feel his nails digging into the palms of his hands, and he makes the effort to relax his grip.

He’s nervous. It’s inevitable, he knows. He cannot  _ not  _ be—not when they are about to commit the worst Taboo of them all. It’s madness, he knows. He’s thought about it a lot since the moment Obito proposed the idea, half-mad with grief and anger, drowning in guilt and a deep sense of betrayal.

“ _ He _ made me study it,” he’d said, eyes too wide and fervent and burning. “ _ He _ perfected it,  _ he _ said, he perfected it so that when  _ he _ died, I could bring  _ him _ back. He said it will work, no doubt, not like every failure that’s come before. He—” Obito gulped on air, once, twice. “If it worked on  _ him, _ even if there  _ is _ a catch—” because there  _ has _ to be one, all three of them know. Madara had taken Obito and brainwashed him to the point that he fought Minato-sensei without restraint and would’ve gladly killed him if not for the series of events that ended up in Madara’s true plot being revealed. Obito hasn’t forgiven himself for what happened after that, not when sensei sacrificed himself by blocking an attack meant for Obito and then died in his arms, “—we should at least try it, we should—I can’t bear  _ not trying,” _ he said. No, he pleaded. 

And they caved.

Because.

Because both Rin and Kakashi also want their teacher back, because Kakashi has had to listen to Kushina cry herself to sleep every other night, because Naruto was born after the fact and was not able to even meet his father. Because Obito is stewing in guilt and grief and anger and they love him, and they will do whatever they can to help him, even if that means helping him break the laws of the world.

Obito drew the array Madara taught him, to show them. 

It took him a week, and when Kakashi saw the final product he wondered how the fuck he’d managed to finish it in so short a while. It was easily the most complicated array he had ever seen, and it took them another week of arguing and then eight months of recombining elements and re-designing it until they managed to create a variant that would draw its power from the three of them and not Obito alone.

(They just got him back, they were not about to let him sacrifice himself or do anything alone ever again. Not then, and certainly not now. They are a  _ team _ , a proper one this time, because Kakashi actually knows what that means, now.)

They walk around the circle and take their places. They kneel. It feels almost ritualistic, Kakashi thinks rather inanely. Like kneeling down for prayer—not that Kakashi is much of a religious person, but he knows at least that much.

His eyes find Rin’s across the circle. They are determined, bright. There’s a furrow right in the middle of her brow. When he turns to look at Obito, his lips are pressed so tightly together that they pull on the scars on the right side of his face. 

Kakashi doesn’t know what he himself looks like, but then again, his face is still covered by his mask. Only his eyes are visible, and they’ve never been particularly expressive, so it doesn’t really matter.

The three of them look at each other in the eye, serious. They nod. 

It’s starting. There’s no going back. 

Suddenly, he has doubts. Are they doing the right thing? Should they stop—?

“At three,” Obito says. Kakashi breathes in deeply and banishes all lines of thought, all the doubts circling his mind. He has to concentrate. Calm. Breathe. “One, two—”

The sound of their clapping in unison is loud in the tense silence of the room. The moment stretches indefinitely, as if time has decided to stop passing for a heartbeat or two. 

“Three,” Obito says, and the three of them put their palms flat on the floor. The tip of their fingers touch the array, and the crackle of the alchemic reaction is loud and charged and so much stronger than any Kakashi has ever experienced. It travels from his fingertips and up to his arms, his shoulders, his head and core and legs. He feels it everywhere and it’s uncomfortable in a way alchemy has never been, for him.

There’s too much light.

Too much.

He closes his eyes but doesn’t move his hands, doesn’t stop channeling his alchemy into the transmutation. Doing so now would be stupid and Kakashi may be many things but stupid, he is not. 

(Not usually.)

His ears pop and there’s a feeling of wrongness pressing in around him, the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and then—

A door—

A flash of white, an eerie grin—

Hands—

Knowledge too much knowledge too much too much too much stop  _ take it away! _

It stops. Kakashi heaves, palms on the floor, knees trembling.

“He-llo there, my three little al-che-mists,” a distorted, sing-song voice calls, and Kakashi shudders as he opens his eyes (his mask is gone because he’s naked why is he naked) and they fall upon the...entity standing in front of him. It has the vague shape of a human being, though it’s pure white. Behind it, a giant door looms over them, and Kakashi recognizes it but doesn’t, at the same time.

The being smiles. It’s horrifying.

Only then the words register in his mind. Kakashi whips his head around, searching for Obito, for Rin, and—yes, there they are. Each has a door behind them, too, and they are also naked. Kakashi doesn’t particularly care about that, not now.

“Who are you?” Obito demands of the being, aggressively showing his teeth while putting himself between Rin and the entity. He looks dangerous.

“I am all and nothing,” the entity says, and if Kakashi is not hallucinating, it sounds amused. Its voice reverberates eerily, daunting. “I’m knowledge, I’m power. I’m the world.” A beat of silence. “Some call me God,” it says, and if possible, its smile widens even more. “But I prefer to be called the Truth. And you’ve opened the door to my domain,” it says, and now it sounds almost...disappointed. “Tut-tut. You’re playing a dangerous game, little al-che-mists. And without even knowing the rules! But then again, nobody who does know the rules decides to play the game, and it would be so boring if nobody ever visited me...”

Kakashi’s sense of dread heightens. They’ve made a mistake. They’ve made a terrible mistake, and there’s no going back.

“And you also used a very good array,” the being muses. It shifts its weight from one foot to the other, or at least it appears to do so. “Very good, indeed. I daresay the one who first came up with it knew most of the rules of the game, and he came very close to a successful transmutation.” Then it shrugs. Smiles. It looks bloodthirsty. “It would have, of course, cost the life of the one who activated it, and the corpse reanimation would have lasted barely a year or so, so I don’t know if it was worth it, really.”

The world sways. There are gray spots intruding on the white of the impossible space at the corners of Kakashi’s eyes.

_ Cost the life of the one who activated it. _

_ Cost the life of— _

“Only a year?” Obito’s voice is so dry it cracks, and Kakashi—

Kakashi is so  _ angry  _ that Obito is focusing on that instead of the fact that he had been expected to sacrifice his life completely for that madman—

“Mmm, thereabouts,” the thing—Truth—says, sitting down cross-legged as if they were doing something as mundane as having a picnic while chatting about the weather. “It wouldn’t have been the alchemist himself, though, but a vague new soul who’d feel so much pain being tethered to a failing body that it’d probably kill itself before reaching the year term, the poor thing,” it says, almost sounding pitying. Almost. If it weren’t for the sing-song voice.

Rin vomits. Kakashi doesn’t blame her. He honestly feels like following her example.

“And, and Minato-sensei…?”

Truth loses its jovial air and it’s not less terrifying because of it. “He’s dead. Death comes for all, and it can never be reversed. That’s the natural order of things, and it cannot be altered, no matter how many little alchemists try and try. The  _ thing  _ you created is no more your teacher than I am human. Remember that, and  _ never  _ forget.”

Obito visibly gulps. There are tears in his eyes. Kakashi hasn’t seen him cry since before he was abducted. His voice shakes when he asks, “So...what will become of us?”

Truth shrugs. Hums. “Well, you’ve opened the doors. You’ve acquired knowledge. Because of your modified array, you will all live. But there’s a toll, and the toll must be paid.”

Is Rin who asks the question this time. Her voice is full of the same dread Kakashi feels. “A toll?”

“Yes, little al-che-mist.” Truth’s terrifying smile is back. “Everything comes with a  _ price.” _

Kakashi blanches, but doesn’t have the time to ask anything about it, about what it could be, because—

The world lurches. Spins.

“Bye-bye, little al-che-mists...!”

Pain. 

Pain in his eye and his head and his arms and he screams. He can hear Obito and Rin screaming, too, and his ears pop. He thinks he hears, “Don’t come again,” before he’s back on the storehouse, kneeling inside his own circle, covered in sticky sweat and in a pain so terrible he can’t stay up.

He sobs, slumping over, light-headed and confused, head stuffed with too much knowledge and too much pain to think.

“Obito,” he hears Rin say, voice muffled, gasping, hurt. But she’s the one who knows any Alkahestry, the one who can  _ heal, _ and her devotion to her chosen path shines through, now, as she assesses their health. “Kakashi, are you…?” She gasps, whines. Kakashi wants to ask what is wrong, but he can’t find his voice inside the pain. “What’s missing?”

What’s…?  _ Oh. _ Oh, it’s not sweat, what covers him.

It’s  _ blood. _

“Right leg,” Obito rasps. He’s alive. He’s alive and Kakashi feels so, so relieved. Even if Truth had told them they would all live, he’d still feared. “Left eye. You?”

“Left leg,” Rin says, tightly. Her breath hitches and then she coughs. It’s a terrible wet sound and it goes on for too long to be healthy. She doesn’t comment, but Kakashi makes a mental note to ask, later. “Nothing else. Kakashi?”

Kakashi opens his eyes, but can’t see anything out of the left one. He can also feel the emptiness in his sleeve. “Left arm,” he says clinically, feeling almost detached from his own body. “My eye, too. The left one.”

Rin swears, and Kakashi can hear her moving. That can’t be good for the leg.

“Rin—”

“No, shut up. I need to—” There’s a sound of tearing cloth and ragged breathing. “There,” she says. “I’ve bandaged myself up, and I’m gonna do the same to you both, and then we’ll—then we’ll get out of here.”

It’s a nice sentiment, yes. Kakashi admires her for it, but he’s a bit more of a realist. Or pessimist, maybe. It depends on who you ask. So they are alive for now, but they have missing body parts and not a single cauterization, and he knows, he  _ knows, _ that at the rate in which they are losing blood they won’t be able to stay conscious much more, and then…

He never thought he’d die so young, not even when he was feeling self-destructive, before. At least he’s not going to die alone (like his father), but together with people he loves. Is that morbid? Probably. At least—

A bang, a crash, an explosion of dust and purple lights of transmutation, hurried steps. A moment of charged silence, then a deep inhale. It almost sounds like a sob.

“Oh, you stupid, stupid, stupid kids, what have you  _ done?!” _

It’s a voice they all recognize, a voice that belongs to a person they hadn’t wanted to involve in case they failed, in case she tried to stop them. (They were so stupid. So, so stupid, but Kakashi is glad that they weren’t as good as they thought they were in covering up their tracks or she wouldn’t be here, and then they’d  _ surely  _ die for real.

Now, at least, they have a chance.)

“Kushina-san!”

“Kushina-neechan!”

“Idiots. Idiots, idiots, idiots. I’m going to save you all and then I’m going to  _ kill you,” _ she says, angry and worried and with something that might be guilt in her voice.

No, no, no! That’s exactly what they  _ didn’t  _ want. That’s exactly why they hadn’t said anything to her, even though her creativity and genius with arrays won her the title of Master before she was even twenty.

But Kakashi has already accepted their idiocy and their poor planning ability, so of course it makes sense that’s another thing they failed in, too.

“Rin, you first. That bleeding on your leg is too much, I don’t like it. Guys, put pressure on your wounds, try to stop it while I work with Rin.”

Kakashi tries, he does, but he doesn’t have the strength to move. He can vaguely see a green flash of Alkahestry and hear a muttered conversation, but he’s too tired and woozy and can’t seem to keep his one eye open.

_ Blood-loss, _ he realizes before fading out. 

_ Too much. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Second part! Sorry it took so long. (I can't promise that next part will be up soon, either :/)
> 
> Important: if you read the first chapter before this chapter was up, then you may want to re-read it, since I've tweaked some things to make more sense.
> 
> That's all. Hope you enjoy! <3

Obito hates himself. He’s done so for years, but never as much as he did when he woke up from Madara’s manipulations with sensei in his arms, covered in blood. (He’d been smiling at him. Minato-sensei had been smiling while Obito cried and Madara is dead but Obito almost wishes he weren’t so that he could kill him himself). 

Even that pales with how much he hates himself now, bleeding out from losing a limb and half-blind, listening as Rin tries to keep her cries in as Kushina treats her wound, and seeing Kakashi slumped over a pool of his own blood.

It’s his fault.

He asked them to do it, he asked them for help, and for what? Nothing. More pain. More loss.

He should have insisted on doing it himself alone. He would have died, yes, but—but at least his team, his _friends_ wouldn’t be paying for his idiocy again. He made them lose a sensei, now he’s made them lose parts of themselves. How much will he cost them before they abandon him completely? He wouldn’t blame them if they did, Obito is bad luck. He should have died back in that cave in. So many things would be better if he had.

Obito drags himself over to Kakashi's side, trusting Kushina to take care of Rin. It hurts—he only has one leg now, and the shock and the pain and the sheer amount of information that was thrust inside his head in such a short amount of time make him feel terribly woozy and uncoordinated. He tries not to pay attention to the ache on his thigh and the throbbing of his temples, or the sticky warmth running down his face, but he's not completely successful as he slowly but stubbornly makes his way over his fallen comrade. The white chalk blurs and sticks to his pants with clingy particles but he ignores them—what do they even matter, when he's already a mess of blood and dirt?

He's gasping, short of breath and on the brink of unconsciousness when he reaches the silver-haired boy, and he stops to wheeze a bit and get his breath back before actually touching him. Kakashi is completely unconscious, pulse way too slow as his wounds bleed freely and Obito roughly bites his lower lip. Idiot.

"You could have at least stopped the blood flow before passing out, Bakakashi," he tells him. Kakashi, of course, doesn't answer.

Obito sighs and takes another strip from his already mutilated shirt and begins securing it around Kakashi's new stump as good as he can.

Obito can't really blame him—it's not like he could do a lot with only one arm. Obito had both of them and bandaging his leg was more difficult than it had any right to, he thinks. He hasn't thrown up yet only because he's somehow become desensitized to all the gore after his time with Madara.

(He was so lucky back then. Even when things went wrong and he was hurt he at least hadn’t lost any part of himself. He was disfigured, yes, and in chronic pain from what Obito suspects was a fracture badly healed, but he could move and practice his alchemy and _see_ —)

(Now...now he can still practice his alchemy at least, but at what cost?)

(He really should have died.) 

He ties the improvised bandage as tight as he can and dares to, and then tears off another piece of his shirt to wipe some of the blood off Kakashi's face. His mask is back in place—it probably was never off, not in the _real_ world—but Obito can't help but picture what he saw back in the white place with Truth. Kakashi's face had always been a mystery, and he'd come up with so many ridiculous possibilities and theories about what the mask was hiding that actually seeing it had been almost a letdown. A childish part of him is slightly disappointed that there wasn't anything hideous or weird under Kakashi's mask. Just... a face. Granted, a little more angular and softer than he thought it'd be, and he thinks he saw a hint of sharp fangs at some point, but all in all a very normal face. He has a beauty mark on the left side of his chin. That's all. Mystery solved. 

(So why is he still thinking about it?)

( _Probably because you think it's a very handsome face,_ a tiny voice in the back of his head says, but Obito forcefully pushes it back and pretends he didn't hear it.) 

His own empty socket throbs in sympathy when Obito looks at the place where Kakashi's eye should be. It's curious—they've lost the same eye, but Rin didn't lose any, just her leg. The three of them lost a limb, even though it's not the same one. Obito can't help but try and make sense of the calculation. Was this the cost of human life? So little?

No. No, it's not. Don't be stupid, now. Truth itself said that life cannot be bought, and though it didn't do so with those words, the meaning was implied. No, they got off easy. They got off easy because _he_ had perfected the circle, somehow, and later on the three of them miraculously didn't mess it up when they transformed it into one that could be activated by three people together. And instead of killing any of them, it took a toll.

 _Everything has a price,_ huh.

Obito can't help but think that the price was too high, even when he intellectually knows that it was not. But seeing Kakashi like this, and hearing Rin's cries (reduced, now, Kushina must be finishing up. That's good, Kakashi needs help right now, his pulse is too sluggish. And Obito, well, he's not doing so well either. There are dark spots encroaching on his sight from the edges of his vision.)

"Kushina," he says, and his voice is raspy, dry, too low. He clears his throat and tries again. "Kushina-neesan, are you done there? Kakashi is—"

"I'm going, I'm going. Keep pressure on that, and don't move," she tells Rin, sternly. "I'm going to check on the boys and if I need you, I'll help you over, okay? So stay put."

Kushina seems to materialize beside them, or at least it appears so because she crosses the room in barely a few seconds when it took Obito what seemed like ages to reach Kakashi, but it could be the blood loss talking. 

Kushina tuts at them and then moves Obito to rest down on the floor, flat.

"You'll lose less blood if you're in a horizontal position,” she says. “I know it feels gross, but you're already gross, so bear with it until I'm done with him," she says, pointing to Kakashi. 

Obito grunts and is vaguely aware of Kushina kneeling beside Kakashi and activating a green array.

A moment passes, and then he feels a shiver of dread crawling down his spine. He opens his eye (when had he closed it?) and frowns.

"Rin?" Obito asks, worried even though she should be fine, by Kushina's words before she came over. Rin is okay and being rather stubborn, as always.

"She'll be alright, brat," Kushina says, but her eyes and her attention don't waver from what she's doing while checking Kakashi. Her movements suddenly falter, then get more frenetic. Her face turns grim, her brow furrowed, and anxiety starts to claw inside Obito.

"What? What's wrong?" he asks, and his alarm is clear even though his voice is rather weak. There's something in Kushina's expression that he doesn't like at all.

"Fuck," Kushina says, and if Kushina is swearing something must be very wrong, because since the moment she learned she was pregnant she’s made a conscious effort to completely clean her vocabulary, as she didn't want to pass on bad manners to her baby. Kakashi had pointed out that said baby was barely a clump of cells that couldn't learn anything yet, and Kushina had followed him with threats of violence for fifteen minutes before she calmed down. She later told Kakashi, very snidely, that it would be difficult to break a bad habit so she'd better start before the baby was even born so by the time they were starting to learn to speak her vocabulary would be neat and pristine and nobody could call her out for being a bad influence to her own child. So if she's swearing now, and as colorfully as she is... it must be very, very bad.

"We need help. Rin. Rin, come here." She is calling Rin, and after telling her not to move on her own? Obito is starting to _panic._ "Careful, but quick! Obito, I need you to calm down. If you don't, I'll knock you out. Stress will make the bleeding worse, so take deep breaths. Okay?"

"I'm here, what do you need?" Rin says, asks, _demands,_ and Obito looks at her and she looks pale and tired and drained, but her brown eyes are fierce and determined as she looks at Kushina, ready to work.

"I'll need you to work on stopping the blood. I didn't notice before, but there's a cut artery and he's bleeding out worse than I thought. We need to cauterize it _right now_ or—" Or he won't make it. Obito knows that's what she doesn't say, and his breathing exercises aren't going so well, but he can't afford to keep panicking or Kushina will keep her word and actually knock him out and he doesn't want that, he needs—he needs to know what happens with Kakashi, he needs to know that he's going to be okay. He cannot do that if he's unconscious, so he breathes. In, out, in, out, hold.

"On my three," Kushina says. She's going to cauterize it, Obito reckons. She's going to start the reaction and Rin is going to guide it through her Alkahestry in order to make the operation the cleanest and safest possible, but—"One, two, NOW!"

The purple of Kushina's alchemy mixes with the green of Rin's Alkahestry and Obito feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as the room fills with static. Then—

Kakashi screams, a blood-curling, long howl of pure pain that cuts right through Obito's heart and that resonates inside his head long after the reactions die down and Kakashi has quieted down, unconscious once again.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, why is this happening? Why did he have to involve them in his stupid, stupid plan?

(Why did they accept to help him? Why?) 

Kushina rises, then looks at Kakashi, looks at Obito, looks at Rin. Her face is splattered with blood and it looks so grim.

"Rin," she starts, sharp but weary. "I need you to stay here with Obito. Work on his leg. His amputation was below the knee, and he's still aware - it is not as bad as it could've been. I'm taking Kakashi to Tsunade, and then I'm coming for you. Keep quiet, keep your head down, and for the love of all that you care about, don't do anything stupid. I can't lose you, too."

Obito closes his eyes and lets the tears escape. He's cried more in the last couple of hours (minutes? how long were they gone? How much time has passed since Kushina arrived? Obito doesn't know, he's lost all sense of time) than he's done in the last year.

"Yeah, okay," Rin says, approaching Obito's prone form but darting glances to Kakashi and the way Kushina picks him up bridal style. Once he gets better (because he will, _dammit,_ he _has_ to), Obito will make sure to make fun of him. Just a little, though, because he's well enough aware that once Kushina comes back for them she'll carry one of them on her back, and the other bridal style just like Kakashi. And as he's the one whose condition is worse, he doubts he's going to get a piggyback ride.

Even though he makes his best effort, Obito loses time. Rin is taking care of him and he knows, instinctively, that he's going to be okay. Kushina took Kakashi away, and she's taking him to Tsunade, so he's also going to be okay, too. Rin's face shows determination and will, and even though she's pale and sweaty from the effort and blood loss, she's still going strong. She's okay. The three of them will be okay. This reassurance lets him lose himself to the sweet call of unconsciousness, and he drifts. 

Minutes pass, or maybe hours. Maybe days. He wakes to flashes of pain and light and red and white, and goes back to the darkness intermittently. He thinks Kushina comes back for them. He thinks he is carried princess-style, just as he'd predicted. He thinks he hears a feminine but not really all that familiar voice swearing like a sailor and berating him (them?) to Amestris and beyond.

Obito's never been to Amestris. He'd like to, if only to say he's been there and saw ex-president Mustang walking down the street. Even if there's something fishy in the history of the place, something bloody and hidden in its closet so deeply that Obito doubts it'll ever come out of it. It was Amestris and her alchemists the ones that started turning things on its head. It was Amestris and Flame and Fullmetal who started a rebellion and forced change into the workings of the military, and in turn, how Alchemy was perceived—Obito is so glad for that. Because Alchemy is so much more than an instrument of death, so much more than a weapon (even if it is also that, dangerous and deadlier than any gun); Alchemy is also art and creation and _life,_ and without Amestris' revolution his own country might never have realized it. 

Their government had worked much like Amestris' dictatorship, back before Mustang's so-called coup. (Is it a coup if the government is actually as corrupted as Amestris' had been?). Konoha was a military government, with a Kage who ruled like their Fhürer did. Before Obito turned five, however, things started changing, and Amestris rocked the rest of the world. It influenced first their neighbors, of course: Aerugo, Drachma, Creta and Xing, in particular, but from there the waves kept on expanding until it reached the Elemental countries. 

It took time, and effort, and many uprisings, but things are changing here, too. They do not yet live in a democracy—it sounds like a faraway dream, still, though definitely one that is much more attainable than before Obito was born. 

Obito sometimes resents that the change hadn't started earlier—his parents might have never been thrown into war, may have lived pass his firsts months of life to raise him, if it had—but he's mostly grateful. He's fifteen years old and he's had too many close calls with war and death for a lifetime. He would like to live the rest of it in peace, and maybe, just maybe, it could be reached soon enough to let him.

“Brat. Oi, brat, can you hear me?” Someone is patting Obito’s cheek. It’s not a particularly gentle pat, and Obito moans, tries to push the hand away. “So you _are_ conscious. I need you to open your eyes, well, eye. Whatever.”

Sensations and reality are coming back to him, and he sincerely wishes they’d stay far, far away if the headache and the pain in his body are the punishment for being awake.

The owner of the voice pinches his cheek, and the sting startles him into full awareness. “Awake.”

“‘m awake, ‘m awake,” he groans, blinking the blurriness out of his right eye, then squinting at the blond figure at his side. _Minato-sensei,_ his heart says. _No, no. Wrong blond. Wrong length. Not him,_ his brain spits back. His heart breaks anew, but it’s a rather common feeling at this point, a pain that he’s learned to live with, and he pushes it to the very back of his mind. “Tsunade?”

“Tch. It’s Tsunade-sama to you, brat,” she says, then uses one hand to hold Obito’s eye open and with the other she flashes a light into it.

Obito hisses in pain as his headache worsens, but Tsunade’s grip doesn’t let him move away.

“You don’t look any worse-for-wear,” she finally declares, letting go of his face and turning away from him. “You’ll be fit to travel soon.”

Obito blinks, trying to get the dark spots to disappear, without much success.

Then her last words register in his brain, and he frowns. “Travel?”

“You’ll have to speak with Kushina about that,” Tsunade says. “My job was to patch you and your two stupid friends up, and that’s what I did. You brats made me lose a good night of sleep.” Her voice is carefully controlled, and it would almost sound disinterested, if not for the barest tremble beneath the surface. She’s affected.

Of course she is, Obito berates himself. She’s the head of the hospital for a reason, and it’s because she cares.

“Thank you, Tsunade-sama,” he says formally. His voice is raspier that he’d like. Tired. At least he’s too tired to cry anymore. “How are my—how is my team?” Not friends, because Obito isn’t sure if he can still call them that, after all of this. Maybe they won’t want to, and he would accept it if that’s the case.

Tsunade sighs, long and hard, then turns serious eyes at him. Obito bites his lip.

“They’re going to live,” is what she says, and it’s not what Obito wants to hear, exactly, but it’s the most important thing.

The rest...the rest he’ll figure it out later.


End file.
